Between Giants

by Prit Buttar

  On the southern flank of the Soviet operation, 39th Army from the neighbouring 3rd Belarusian Front joined in the attack. Facing it was 95th Infantry Division, which had almost been completely destroyed during Bagration. Although its ranks had been filled with replacements, many of these were of a similar calibre to the men used to create the new grenadier divisions. Survivors of 197th and 256th Infantry Divisions had also been incorporated into the division, but there had been no time for training and other exercises that would have allowed the disparate units to bed down together. The division’s left flank gave way almost immediately, and 39th Army’s leading elements rampaged through the division’s artillery positions. The rest of the division fell back in disorder, with no contact with friendly forces on either flank. For Decker’s 5th Panzer Division, this was a singularly unwelcome development, requiring the panzer division to spread its forces even more thinly in an attempt to provide some sort of screen along the southern flank of the Soviet breakthrough.

  Despite these successes, Bagramian continued to fret about Volskii’s apparent lack of urgency. He had further cause for concern on 8 October, when the weather turned much wetter, making many areas swampy and therefore further hindering armoured movement. Chistiakov’s 6th Guards Army reported increasingly strong German counter-attacks on its right-hand formation, 22nd Guards Rifle Corps, at Mazeikiai. A little to the south, 29th Tank Corps, part of Volskii’s 5th Guards Tank Army, finally joined the advance, swiftly capturing first Telšiai and then Plungė. But 3rd Guards Tank Corps, part of the same army, continued to be held up some distance from the front by heavily congested roads, and Bagramian once more berated Volskii for not moving forward faster. Nevertheless, by the end of the day, Bagramian’s leading formations were fast approaching the third line of German defences that 1st Baltic Front had identified at the outset of the operation.

  These defences ran broadly along the Reich frontier, and had been given the grand title ‘East Prussian Defence Position’. The line of fortifications had been created by Erich Koch, Gauleiter – Party chief – of East Prussia, in his role as Reich Defence Commissar. Although Koch spent a great deal of time and energy on the fortifications, whose construction was overseen by Kurt Knuth, one of his subordinates, the defence position left much to be desired. Originally, the intention had been that the positioning of fortifications would be directed by local army commanders, and that the National Socialist Party’s role would be merely to provide manpower and resources, but there was a lack of engineering officers to oversee the task, with the result that the political aspect of the fortifications assumed a greater degree of importance than their military value. Many fortifications were badly positioned, and although Koch was able to announce that the first month of construction saw the completion of nearly around 14,000 miles of trenches and the excavation of over 41 million tons of earth, many of these trenches were too shallow to be of any major military value. Koch also had a bad reputation for using every opportunity to benefit his own supporters, and the construction of the East Prussian Defence Position was no exception. One of his subordinates was ‘General’ Fiedler, who had been a senior officer in the fire service in East Prussia. He was the owner of a cement works, and persuaded Koch to authorise the manufacture of large numbers of so-called ‘Koch-pots’, which consisted of a concrete tube with a hinged metal lid. These were buried upright in the ground, and were designed to be manned by a single soldier, who would hide in the pot until a Soviet tank was close enough to be engaged with a Panzerfaust. Soldiers regarded them with contempt, as the concrete from which they were manufactured was prone to fragmentation if hit by small-arms fire, and any soldier inside the one-man fortification felt isolated and alone. The diversion of so much concrete meant that there was much less available for use in other fortifications, which might have been of greater military value.18

  It is not clear how much Bagramian knew about the true nature of these defences; perhaps veering on the side of caution, he decided that rupturing the line before the retreating German units could deploy along them was a high priority, hence his constant urging of his front-line units to continue the pace of their attack. Late on 8 October, he received a gratifying report from Chistiakov: 79th Tank Brigade, part of 19th Tank Corps, had captured the German airfield at Vaiņode, only 25 miles from the Baltic coast. Further south, the spearheads of the Soviet advance were less than 12 miles from Klaipėda. Less impressive was the news from Volskii’s 5th Guards Tank Army. The bulk of its forces appeared to be stopped along the line of the River Minija. An increasingly irritated Bagramian demanded that Volskii should at least attempt to bypass the German defences, and then press on to the Baltic coastline; he gave a deadline of midday on 10 October for the completion of this order.19

  The southern axis of the Soviet advance was making good progress. 5th Panzer Division was forced to dispatch its reconnaissance battalion to deal with a deep penetration by Soviet forces in the lines of 548th Grenadier Division, and then late on 8 October, orders arrived for the division to fall back to the East Prussian Defence Position in order to prevent Soviet forces from breaking through to Tilsit. As an officer of the division recalled, this was no simple task:

  What such a move entailed, with complete enemy air superiority, enemy tanks that had already broken through, and columns of refugees on the retreat roads, can barely be described.20

  The evacuation of the civilian population in the face of the Soviet advance was something that had been discussed repeatedly as the front line approached German territory. There were many Germans living in south-west Lithuania, even outside the boundaries of Memelland, and many of the Lithuanian residents of the region were also not enthusiastic about the return of Soviet rule; despite the bitter disappointment of German occupation, they remembered the previous Soviet occupation as being even worse. Any evacuation would fall under the remit of the local Party structure, and whilst the Party had been energetic in demanding that the Wehrmacht turned over territory to its control in the victorious years, there was huge reluctance to reverse the process as the Wehrmacht retreated. Had the military been given control of the area to their rear, they would have been in a position to order a timely evacuation, but for the moment, everything behind the immediate front line remained firmly under Party control. In any event, on 5 October, as the Soviet attack began, Schörner announced that there was no requirement for any evacuation. Raus, who was perhaps less devout in his adherence to Hitler’s doctrines than his superior, disagreed with this policy, and immediately urged Party officials to organise an evacuation. At first in a trickle, then in an increasingly disorganised flood, refugees began to struggle towards East Prussia, heavily burdened with hopeless quantities of baggage. Many such columns were overrun by the advancing Red Army, while others greatly hindered the movements of the Wehrmacht. Only in Klaipėda itself – which had the highest density of German citizens in the entire zone affected by the fighting – was the evacuation conducted in a timely and relatively efficient manner.

  The hasty redeployment of German formations now began to have its inevitable effect. Priority had naturally been given to the combat elements of the panzer divisions and Grossdeutschland, but as the fighting vehicles began to run out of fuel and ammunition, the need for their supply elements became increasingly vital. By the end of 8 October, the Tiger tank battalion of Grossdeutschland was forced to abandon several tanks – more than had been lost as a result of the fighting with the Red Army. Nevertheless, Grossdeutschland continued to be one of the few units putting up strong resistance to the Soviet advance. It reorganised into three battlegroups – Kampfgruppe Schwarzrock, Kampfgruppe von Breese, and a third built around the reconnaissance battalion – and attempted to hold positions along the Minija and around Kretinga and Salantai. Kampfgruppe von Breese suffered heavy losses in an encounter with advancing Soviet armour from Volskii’s tank army, and then pulled back to Kretinga. Here, they found that their road crossed a bridge over the railway, where a train was burning
after being hit by an air raid. Some of the wagons were laden with ammunition, and there were a few nervous moments as the battlegroup crossed the bridge, still under aerial bombardment.21

  A combination of increasing German resistance and lengthening Soviet supply lines began to slow the advance of 1st Baltic Front. Near Vainode, 51st Guards Rifle Division, part of Chistiakov’s 6th Guards Army, found itself under heavy counterattack, which it beat off with difficulty. 43rd Army, aiming to reach the coast to the south of Klaipėda, continued to make good progress with its eight rifle divisions, as did 2nd Guards Army, with 1st Tank Corps, 3rd Guards Rifle Division and 16th Latvian Rifle Division in the lead. By the end of 9 October, its spearheads had penetrated the first positions of the East Prussian Defence Position, even before 5th Panzer Division could occupy the defences. With Soviet forces advancing freely on either flank, the German division abandoned attempts to defend an extended front line, and pulled back towards Tilsit. To the west, the town of Šilutė, known to the Germans as Heydekrug, was captured by the Red Army before many of its civilians had left. Much of the local population fled to the coast immediately to the north. Here, protected by a paper-thin screen of ad hoc German units, they waited in fear while German engineers ferried them across to the Kurische Nehrung, the narrow line of sand dunes about six miles off the coast. Fortunately for them, the Soviet forces made little attempt to destroy the small enclave, which was evacuated over five days. Many of the residents of Priekulė were caught by the leading Soviet elements before they could leave, and the survivors who reached the pocket on the coast brought terrifying tales of rape and murder.

  Late on 9 October, Bagramian finally received word from Volskii. A shortage of fuel, he wrote, was preventing him from advancing. General Nikolai Papivin, commander of 3rd Air Army, advised that he had transport aircraft available, and fuel was immediately flown out to the armoured spearheads. Finally, Volskii confirmed that all was ready for a final push to the coast on 10 October.22 On the northern flank of the advance, Soviet forces bypassed the German battlegroup in Viekšniai, and only a determined counter-attack by the Panther tanks, supported by a company of panzergrenadiers, salvaged the situation. A little to the west, other Soviet forces attempted to secure crossings over the River Venta, and the heavy Tiger tanks of Schwere Panzer Abteilung 510 went into action near Mazeikiai. Reinforced by Sperrgruppe Schäfer from III SS Panzer Corps, the Tigers, supported by a battalion of 4th Panzer Division’s panzergrenadiers, fought their way along the road from Mazeikiai to Viekšniai, eliminating three more Soviet bridgeheads. Interrogation of Soviet prisoners suggested that elements of at least three Soviet divisions had been involved. Other elements of 4th Panzer Division moved to secure Leckava; an attempt to advance onto the left bank of the Venta and push west failed in the face of Soviet anti-tank defences, but contact was established with 61st Infantry Division, which was deploying to the north-west.23 The German line along the northern side of the Soviet breakthrough was therefore stabilising, but the westward advance of Bagramian’s armies seemed unstoppable. Here, it seemed the further they advanced, the greater the impact of their success on the Germans:

  The rhythm of the battle meant that the enemy was greatly demoralised on the main axis of our thrust. One particularly noticed this in the prisoners, whose numbers grew from day to day. They were dismayed, willingly gave information, and repeatedly exclaimed, ‘Hitler kaput!’ How little they resembled those who I had seen in the first days of the war in the Ukraine!

  The enemy’s line of retreat resembled a huge cemetery. Everywhere there were tanks, guns, trucks – and bodies. Even the soldiers, who had seen and experienced so much before, found these scenes gruesome. But it was the right punishment for the crimes committed by the Fascists!24

  From the very start of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, the brutality of the fighting exceeded that of any other European theatre. The Soviet Union was not a signatory to the Hague Conventions, and from the outset of the war, Hitler had urged his troops to show no mercy to the conquered. Millions of Soviet citizens died during the German occupation, some as a result of acts of violence and others as the inevitable consequence of starvation after German occupation authorities seized food and shipped it back to Germany. Many Soviet regiments had a policy of sharing their stories of family members who had died during the war, and the appetite for revenge was therefore strong, from the lowest infantryman to the highest general. Throughout the long campaigns, both sides showed great inconsistency in the treatment of those taken prisoner, often executing them out of hand. Soviet soldiers were also often used as slave labour or – in the early phases of the war, before worker shortages forced Germany to rethink its policies – deliberately starved. Whilst food supplies for German soldiers taken prisoner by the Red Army were also hopelessly inadequate, this reflected the general shortage of food throughout the Soviet Union; many Soviet citizens received little better.

  10 October would prove to be the decisive day of the campaign. After a heavy artillery bombardment, the tanks of 5th Guards Tank Army finally surged forward. 29th Tank Corps reached and took Kretinga in a pincer attack from north and south. To the north of Kretinga, in Dimitravas and Darbėnai, there were work camps full of concentration camp prisoners. It was normal policy for the SS to evacuate such camps before the arrival of Soviet soldiers, and if such an evacuation were impossible, the inmates of the camps were often simply shot. On this occasion, the speed of the Soviet advance appears to have made any such measures impossible. The sight of so many malnourished prisoners shocked many of the battle-hardened Soviet soldiers, further feeding the implacable desire for revenge.25

  The Soviet 3rd Guards Tank Corps found itself heavily engaged with the retreating battlegroups of Grossdeutschland. Fighting continued all day as the battlegroups conducted a fighting withdrawal, slowly falling back through Plikiai towards Klaipėda. Elements of 31st Tank Brigade pushed on and reached the Baltic coast near Palanga, effectively severing the link between the German 16th and 18th Armies and the rest of the Reich. In a gesture that would be repeated several times as Soviet forces pushed to the Baltic coast in the closing months of the war, the soldiers marked their arrival by filling water bottles with sea water and sending them back to higher commands.26 Elsewhere, Beloborodov’s 43rd Army approached Klaipėda from the south-east, and despite increasing German resistance, succeeded in reaching the coast south of the city. The initial aim of the Soviet operation – to separate Army Group North from the Reich, and to isolate Klaipėda – had been achieved in only six days.

  The contrast between the various offensives mounted by both sides in such a short time is striking. Doppelkopf, the German attack to restore contact with Army Group North, was launched after several panzer divisions – all of them weakened by losses – were assembled in western Lithuania and Latvia, and although contact along the Baltic coast was achieved, the main drive towards Jelgava was blocked. Similarly, Bagramian’s attempts to batter into Riga from the south and south-west also failed in the face of determined resistance. Both operations were conducted on fairly confined battlefields, where the defenders were able to anticipate the coming attack. The terrain favoured the defenders, and the attacking formations were unable to manoeuvre around the prepared positions. By contrast, the successful drive to Klaipėda was on a much larger battlefield, and over terrain more suitable for mobile warfare. Also, unlike the two previous operations, a successful defence would have required a substantial redeployment of forces. The Germans lacked the troops to prepare strong defensive positions along their entire front, and although the area chosen for the operation was a fairly obvious one, the Red Army successfully masked its preparations until it was too late for the Germans to respond in a timely manner. The use of infantry-rich formations to achieve the initial breakthrough was also a ‘luxury’ that was not available to the Germans during Doppelkopf, after their catastrophic losses as a result of Bagration. In both Doppelkopf and Cäsar, the panzer divisions were requir
ed both to break the Soviet defensive line and then to exploit the resultant breaches if they appeared; by contrast, Bagramian massed sufficient forces to ensure that even though his main exploitation force – 5th Guards Army, commanded by the hapless Volskii – failed to make a significant impact until the operation was almost over, the Germans could not hold back the forces committed to the original breakthrough.

  Now that Klaipėda was isolated by land, and Army Group North was trapped in western Latvia, Bagramian ordered his army commanders to prepare for what he expected would be the inevitable German counter-attacks. He anticipated an operation from Army Group North, using troops released by the steady German withdrawal through Riga, aimed at restoring contact between Army Group North and the Reich. To this end, 5th Guards Tank Army was ordered to withdraw from the front line, so that it could be held in reserve to deal with any German attacks. At the same time, there was the threat of a German attack from East Prussia, where 3rd Baltic Front’s 39th Army was withdrawn in preparation for an offensive by Cherniakhovsky’s front into East Prussia. On 12 October, Chanchibatse’s 2nd Guards Army reported that the 16th Latvian Rifle Division had come under attack by a unit not previously identified in the battle, the Fallschirm (parachute) Panzer Division Hermann Goering. This division – nominally part of the Luftwaffe – had been sent to the area from central Poland, and to Bagramian’s relief, its initial attack on the Latvian division was beaten off.27 Bitter fighting raged for another day; German and Soviet accounts attempt to portray their own role in the fighting as a defensive success, and it seems that neither side was able to make any significant headway as the front slowly stabilised along the line of the River Niemen.